And When I Sleep I Will See You In My Dreams
by Lohce Azcry
Summary: He is so sorry. (Amnesia: A Machine For Pigs)


_He stumbles out of the mouth of the temple and all he can think is Hitler Hitler Hitler Hitler Hitler. That name/horror/thing rings in his head like Buddhist gongs, loud and terrible, and around it are smaller bells/images/words chiming bombs, gas, Jews, war, dead, dead, dead, nu-_

_He can't get that word, but it's the background to everything. Nu. There is a Clear dancing after it, but the two are apart and so it's just a Nu and Clear. Of course, he can see them coming closer, and eventually crashing/bombing/gassing into a horror yet to come. Like the hammer coming down on a helpless nail. He bites his lips as he tries to push the Nu and Clear away, but it is no use. _

_And still there is Hitler. He sees a mustache and arms and a sharp clear "Heil!" and at that word a million men die and at that word a million humans blink into skeletons and then to corpses and then to nothing. And around the world he sees men and women furiously collecting guns and flying machines and boats and cars, he sees nation cry for blood and so and they march, they march..._

_The jungle heat is murderous, but his head roars too loud for him to care about removing his stifling coat. A muffled scream beats at his throat and he forces a leg forward and then another, leaning on the stone walls with one arm and tearing at his head with the other. His hair, usually tied in a neat ponytail, was loose black strands glued to his face. _

_Off they march, the boys, the children-_

_"Daddy?"_

_"What's wrong?"_

_"Daddy?!"_

_For a moment it stops and he wants to cry out in relief, he wants to stand there and relish the absence of Hitler and the coming of Nu and Clear but instead he looks up because Mandus knows the questions are from the mouths of his children and above all, he will look up for them. And through the blur of his pain he sees them, Edwin and Enoch, his darlings, his dearest, his life, standing at the entrance illuminated by the Mexican sun. And his heart soars, he forces down the pain and the horror of what that terrible thing in the temple showed him and though he cannot contain it all he contains enough to conjure a smile. Love fills him, he begins to walk towards them, "It is alright, darlings," he soothes, his voice cracking but the petty smile on his face covering it up. _

_"But Daddy, why are you sweaty?"_

_"And why are you red?"_

_"And why are you hurt?"_

_Their voices are high and worried, on the point of terror. It pangs his wounded heart and he uses all his might to push himself to a standing position, remove the hand from his head, relax his face as best as he can. He cannot keep it up forever, though, the thought tugs his attention, "Hurry, hurry, I cannot hold it (I cannot hold the twentieth century)." so he hurries his walk. If he could get far away from the (Orb) thing in the temple the horror may lax a little, and then he could recuperate at the village, order his agent to take them home, and he would hold his children-_

**_Off they march,_**

_Nu_

_(NO)_

**_the boys, the children,_**

_Nucl_

_(NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO)_

**_all dressed up in the mud,_**

_(NO I WILL NOT SEE IT)_

_Nucle_

**_off they march to the beat of the commander,_**

_(I WILL NOT)_

**_run, he says,_**

_(NO)_

**_and two grown boys with candlelight hair run with guns and the air bursts with shrapnel _**

_(DO NOT SHOW ME THIS DO NOT SHOW ME THIS I DO NOT WANT TO-)_

**_and Edwin is the first to fall, and Enoch has enough time to cry out for his brother and then he, too, falls, and they both face eachother with mud and dirt and blood and fear covering their faces, their mouths are slack as boots run past them and boots fall behind them, two little boys thinking of their aged father, father, father, what will he do _**

**_now_**

_(NO)_

**_that_**

_(NO)_

**_their_**

_(NO)_

**_nuclear_**

_He stands on a hill in a far away land and a bomb explodes over a hundred thousand people and this is not a bomb but it is death locked in a shell, and just before it hits, a mushroom blooms in a second, and a hundred thousand blink out of existence, their shadows screaming a print in the earth, and lying in the center are his darlings all grown up, dead, drowned in war, and Mandus has never wanted to scream so bad in his life. He does, in a way, a mix of a sob and a gasp as the heat of Nuclear washes over him. And the sorrow consumes him, he cannot think, cannot live knowing that his boys are all alone and so very dead because this heartless and cruel world cares not for the innocent, cares not for the children, will trample and claw at pure flesh, will rip families apart. _

_His knees buckle; he sinks to the charred dirt and his tears turn it into mud and he wants to reach out and touch his children dead on the ground but he couldn't, wouldn't. __  
_

_And now his boys standing at the top of the temple were truly terrified as they gazed at their frozen father, crouched on the ground, because they knew something was very wrong. Trapped between running away and running forward, they squirmed, looked at eachother and Edwin saw tears start to form on Enoch's eyes. What do we do?, they thought, something is very wrong with daddy and what do we do?_

_"Daddy?" they asked._

_But their father was listening. _

_For Nuclear and Hitler and bomb and war and so many others had come together to form a mouth with eyes for teeth and blood for a tongue and breath that smelt of sewage and guts. And this mouth had crept up to his ear as he wept in the dirt and whispered, "There is another way." and suddenly there was nothing but this sickly, terrible voice whispering in his ear, telling him things that another Mandus would reel back, ignore, curse unto God and damn it to hell. No, he would say, I cannot do such a thing. I will not do such a thing. __But the present industrialist was silent. Whenever he felt uproar and protest bubble, the mouth whispered a clever response to silence it, until he saw what it was trying to say with such clarity that the voice ceased. It didn't need to explain. _

_Oh how horrible such a thing it was. But he must do it. _

_Now he was no longer on a hill but in a hallway again, and he lets the image of two dead soldiers (boys) harden his heart so that when he finally looks back up at Edwin and Enoch he knows what he must do. A tear tries to form on his cheek, but he cuts it at the root. In all the days of his life, this day he must not allow himself to be weak for his children. Their fate rings in his head, and a shadow of the voice whispers the method again. _

_"It is alright, my darlings," his voice mutters as he pushes himself up, low, dark, calm as a frozen lake, with no trace of the comfort the sentence intended, "daddy will make it all better."_

* * *

_His boys are sleeping._

_Curled in their fine beds, wrapped in soft cotton blankets to protect them from the winter's bite. He had ordered the maids and the nanny to double the log supply in the fireplaces and keep the two warm, but regardless of their efforts the house still retained a cold atmosphere. Edwin and Enoch didn't seem to mind, though, and would contantly beg their nanny, since they __couldn't reach their father, to play outside in the snow.__  
_

_The light of the hallways, a thin line across their beds, illuminated their sleeping forms, and he wants to slip to their side and stroke their lemon hair, see the reflection of his darling wife in their faces. He wants to whisper his love into their __dreams, "I am sorry, my boys, so sorry_

_(so sorry) _

_(he holds their hearts in his hand and the blood stains the knees of his pants)_

_(so sorry)_

_I have not been there as I should be. Oh, what I would give to wipe this company from my hands and instead spend all this wasted time on you._

_But he can't..._

_He can't because..._

_Because..._

* * *

_You killed us._

_Daddy._

* * *

A late-at-night drink. He sits in the heart of his Machine and watches them, squealing, shrieking. His children, living in imperfect forms bu_t you will be perfect soon. I shall mold you in their image and I will have my darlings and there will be too many for wretched life to grasp from my hands._

He sits like that all night, legs hanging over the rails, and the comforting hum of the Machine lulls him into a sleep where he dreams of his children. And in the belly of of metal where the pigs bleed and the pipes are warm and the lights thrum pleasantly and his children are born he is content, in this darkness.

* * *

_So sorry._


End file.
